Ep11 - Picking a Good Joomla Extension and Joomla CRM

This week we have a look at how to pick a good Joomla extensions. This is a follow up to a blog post that was floating around stating that there was a module that could be downloaded from the Extension Directory that had hidden malicious code distributed with it.

We also have an interview with Chris Ward who talks to us about CiviCRM and CRM systems in general.

Show Notes

Hello from Suva, Fiji!

Thank you to everyone who has left a rating and a review on this show, it is great to see so many being submitted.

Joomla Extension Directory

Extensions come into play on your Joomla website when you want to increase the functionality of the website. These can be found on the Joomla Extension Directory (JED), which we have mentioned before in an earlier episode.

Some hints and tips on how we review extensions before we install them on our clients websites. Extensions are made up of components, modules and plugins.

Components - large extensions can change the way the website works altogether.

Forums Download managers Form components Modules - can be seen as visual blocks, these are the spaces around main content blocks.

Menu positions Side positions Logos Plugins - rendering in the content view

Facebook like button Embedded youtube video

How do you filter down to know which extension you want to use?

Read the description

Is it what you want it to do? Read over the description carefully and also check out the description and documentation on the developer's website.

Ratings and reviews of the extensions

Ideally you want it to have a high rating (5 being the highest) How many votes make up the ratings Read the reviews, are they positive? Does it have good documentation?

Check the date of the extension.

When was it uploaded and added to the directory? When was it updated?

Check the developers website

Have they developed any other extensions? Are they reputable? Check for contact details. If you have any thoughts or would like to share some great extensions, let us know in the comments section below.

Interview

Chris tells us about what CiviCRM is used for and CRM systems in general.

What is CRM?

Customer relationship management, which is basically a big specific database for people and the interaction with them. How engaged people are, create reports, and see different ways of looking at information.

In terms of Joomla, when choosing a CRM platform it appears to be a better choice to integrate an external CRM to manage contacts. CiviCRM isn't Joomla specific, can be used with WordPress and Drupal also.

Check out the full list of features that you can get with CiviCRM:

http://civicrm.org/go/features Also check out the Joomla - CiviCRM bridge extension to integrate Joomla and CiviCRM together

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/clients-a-communities/crm/72

Chris suggests having a play around with the demo site before using CiviCRM and check out how others have used the system.

http://greens.org.au/ https://www.efa.org.au/ http://www.amnesty.org.au/